The March Stepper
by Die Schildkroten
Summary: An omniscient narrator's eye view retelling of the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, with special appearances by a Girl.
1. Chapter 1

Hello again. I'm back in the saddle after a dry spell of oh lord, eight or nine months.

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The March Stepper  
Chapter One

Once upon a time there was a girl who loved stories more than she loved life.

It didn't matter much to _her_ what the stories were about, as long as they were comic or startling or sad. A saint's biography would send her swooning into the sackclothed arms of the Church and she would be a good Christian girl until she got distracted and slipped back into casual paganism. A tragic king's history would have her moping around the cottage dressed all in black and eying her father's sword meaningfully until he gave her a taste of his belt across her rear for not doing her chores and sent her out back to milk the cows.

For there was never much time for stories in Dyfed's most fertile freehold, and even with seven brothers and two uncles toiling all day in the rolling fields the sun never seemed to set on a farm without leaving a dozen tasks undone. That was agriculture, of course, but she was too young to have realized it. It seemed to her that if the farm was being run _properly_ they would have finished ages and ages ago.

She was pondering this one clammy morning as she herded the kine to pasture. Three dozen sets of delicate hooves tapped their way across the bridge, which was a slender span of flagstones anchored on either side of a cavernous gorge, a good three rods long. The river below churned briskly along fast enough that if you were to drop a branch off the upstream side it would come out of the other end no more than a heartbeat later, or three heartbeats if it had been a dry summer and the river was poorly. She had spent _weeks_ testing this. Sometimes by the time she got home the sun was halfway up the sky and the sheep had a look in their eye that said that they were just about hungry enough to make a run at the cows. That was good for another beating from her frustrated father, who was beginning to suspect that the beatings were not doing either of them a lick of good, mostly because he sometimes suspected that she was thinking about something else during them.

The best branches were nice thick boughs from the yew trees that grew in the churchyards, with or without foliage- she'd tried both. The best place to drop them was just about two thirds of the way across the bridge, where the current was strongest. The best days to drop branches were windless, cloudy, and cool. Today would have been perfect except that just about two thirds of the way across the bridge there appeared to be fingers clamped over the edge. She gave them a cautious prod with the bough.

The fingers tensed. Then they _pulled_. And the Troll came up.

Well, everyone knew that there was a troll under the bridge- a Troll, even. Some of the more superstitious farmers were known to kick a sheep off the side just before they crossed to distract it. She had always known that it was _there_. But knowing something was there was quite different from seeing it in the knotty, blue-green flesh.

It was fantastically ugly, with long skinny arms that hung down to its knees and oily hair worming down its back. Its eyes were black as coal, big as eggs and so wet it looked as if it was about to cry. Its nose was blunt and outthrust as an old hatchet, bulbous like a tuber, and overhung a broad mouth with fleshy lips and snaggle teeth.

It was seven feet tall. She had to crane her neck a bit to get a good look at it.

"Hullo," said the Troll.

Now, the girl was not very polite in her day to day life, but her mother had taught her the essentials of genteel conversation before she had died and so she knew quite well what to do when someone said 'hullo'. But her training in etiquette hadn't prepared her for trolls and so she threw four thousand years of human development in the field of social graces to the winds and said exactly what she was thinking.

"I should think," she said, "that the sheep would be frightened of you."

For the flock was still milling woolily about on the flat cobbles, more impatient than terrified. The Troll considered this for a moment.

"Nah," he (he?) said finally. "Sheep know I'm not interested in them. Didn't your mum tell you that trolls only ever eat things wot have names?"

"My mother is dead," said the girl. "I'm afraid she died in childbirth and never had a chance to tell my papa what she was going to call me. Didn't your mum ever tell _you_ that real people can only get their names from their mothers?"

(The first part was true, but the second part- about her mother dying in childbirth- was a white lie. She had died only a few years ago and in any case it's quite hard to pass on the essentials of genteel conversation in the womb. If children were born knowing what it means to be an adult they would be a good deal less interesting than they are already.)

"Nah," said the Troll. "I never had a mum."

And just like that, they had something in common. The Troll grinned.

"So you got no name? Shame. Can't eat you if you don't have a name."

"Why?" asked the girl. "Not that I have any reason to be worried, you understand. I'm just curious."

"'s the rules," said the Troll, and sat down on the bridge. The process took quite a bit of time and seemed to involve more joints than a biped should be able to have. He unfolded a fistful of gnarled fingers and began ticking off the points one by one on them.

"The first rule is you got to live under a bridge," he said. "That one's important, 'cos- well, it's important, all right? The second rule is you can't eat anything that doesn't have a name. The third rule is you die if you ever meet a wild hart."

"What if you never meet a wild hart?" asked the girl. By this point she was sitting on the bridge herself with her legs splayed out across the cobbles, her arms braced behind her, and the expression of rapt attention that never failed to make the village priest uncomfortable.

"Oh, that's easy," said the Troll. "You live forever. But it's bloody hard to avoid the wild hart in England."

The girl thought about this for a moment. "So you've lived for-"

"Three hundred an' fifty years, give or take," said the Troll. "The best bit was the Roman invasion, see, 'cos they built me bridge. Used to be soldiers trip-trapping over me bridge two, three centuries at a time. And of course there's nothing like a Roman- nice and juicy with a bit of meat on 'em. Why, I could go for a Roman right now. It's bloody unfair, you not having a name and all. I'm _hungry_."

"If you can't eat things that don't have names," asked the girl, to change the subject, "then what happens to the sheep people kick over the side?"

"Most of 'em drown in the river, poor buggers," said the Troll, a trifle sadly. "'cos I don't have room for 'em under the bridge, see, an' I can't give 'em away. Not to trolls, at least, on account of trolls don't trade in livestock."

"What _do_ trolls trade in?" wondered the girl.

"Oh, that's another easy one," said the Troll, pleased. "Trolls trade in stories.

And that was when the girl fell in love.


	2. Chapter 2

Shall we dispense with the formalities, then?

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The March-Stepper  
Chapter Two

Once upon a time there was a Troll who lived under a bridge and a girl with no name.

Trolls tell half stories; that was what the girl found the most irritating about her new friend. One day when they were passing the time he cleared his throat in a way she had come to recognize as a signal and said "Once upon a time in a far away land the King went a'hunting and came across a glade so fair and beautiful that he planted his banner on the very spot and declared that he and his sons would live forever in the castle he would build there."

The girl sat up. "How beautiful was it?" she asked, probingly.

"Comely as the mornin'," said the Troll.

"Cliché," said the girl. The Troll scratched his nose contemplatively.

"To furnish his new castle," he went on, ignoring her completely, "he carted in the finest carpets from the Holy Land, paintings by famous masters, furniture carved from rare and aromatic woods, candlesticks of the purest silver- you know. Swag. He didn't miss a trick, that King. Spent a year and a day and a mountain of gold building that damn castle. Only one thing he left out."

"What was that?" inquired the girl, sitting up straight.

"_Walls_," said the Troll, a slow grin spreading from bat ear to bat ear and exposing a mouth choked with teeth. "On account of the view was so good that he couldn't bear to have anything get between him and it. Right out there in the middle of the boonies he threw down a flagstone floor even a troll couldn't hardly spit across, with a pillar at each corner and a thatch roof to keep the rain out. Wasn't much more than a gazebo!"

"What's a gazebo?"

The Troll told her. She considered this for a moment, then asked "What did he do with the paintings, if there weren't any walls?"

"I expect," (said the Troll, with great dignity) "that he just propped them up against chairs and pillars and them."

The girl accepted this without question, frowned a bit, and asked "What about when he had to go to the loo?"

"What?" demanded the troll, consternated.

"Well," said the girl, "I just can't see a King going to the loo out there in the boonies. They're very particular about that sort of thing."

"He had a silk screen about the chamber-pot," allowed the Troll. "Well, he had two, on account of there wasn't a wall to put it up against." And with that the girl was satisfied.

They sat there in silence for some minutes. It was about when the Troll lifted a lamb from her flock in one massive, creased palm and began to toss it idly from one hand to the other that common decency prompted her to demand "And then what happened?"

The Troll looked up, astonished. "What do you mean, what happened?" he asked.

"I mean what happened next!" explained the girl, exasperated.

"How should I know?" asked the Troll. "_I_ wasn't there."

"But-"

"Can't go around asking people to tell you about things they don't know about, girl. That's in the rules, that is." And he fell into a blue sulk until she stomped her foot once on the cobbles and went home with her sheep milling around her ankles.

("Once upon a time," she told her father the next morning, "a King built a castle without walls in a beautiful glade, because he liked the view so much."

"I'll built _yez_ a castle if'n yez don't watch out," said her father. "Go and milk the cows!"

"Will you really build me a castle?"

"No.")

Other than that, though, life was good; very good, in fact. Life was roses. The Troll and the girl spent every afternoon together, trading riddles, racing sticks, and generally behaving like a couple of enormous prats.

But every day the Troll came around to telling a story, and when he did no amount of wheedling, weeping, or wiles would induce him to continue after he was through. Every day ended with the girl storming off in a huff, the Troll watching her go with his big, watery eyes, knowing she would be back again the next morning.

A year and a day passed in such pleasant pursuits, and with every passing hour the girl found herself more and more smitten with her friend the Troll. In her eyes his long green knobbly arms grew graceful and strong (well, stronger), his oily black hair fell down his back in a foam of curls, and his massive, twisted face was, if not handsome, somewhat less than ugly. In contrast, the boys in the village were sunburnt, spotty, and oh so very _stupid_. They never seemed to know any stories at _all_. And most of them were afraid of her.

And so one day she sat up from the yearling she had been putting to very good use as a pillow and, for the first time ever, interrupted the Troll halfway through his story. "Oh, Troll," said she, "I love you truly."

The Troll, who had been spinning out a long yarn about a fairy blacksmith who proposed marriage to a frog, blinked his oil-drop eyes at her in astonishment.

"And I love you," he said after the sort of long and awkward moment that shows up in stories right after the snotnose kid points out that the king isn't wearing his trousers. "You're like the little sis I never had on account of I was born outta a rock."

The girl scowled. "No, you don't understand," she said, "I _love_ you."

The Troll stuck one long green finger in his ear and twisted it about enthusiastically. "I love you too," he said, "more'n a goat an' more'n cool water onna hot day an more'n a nice fresh Roman. You know that."

Exasperated, she kicked the Troll in the leg. Almost immediately, she regretted it.

"I don't think we're talking about the same kind of thing," she opined a few minutes later when the swelling had gone down. "I love you like in the story."

"Wot story?" said the Troll with a note of desperation in his voice. "I got a thousand an' one of them, me. You mean the one about the mad Turk and the blue salamander?"

"No," said the girl.

"Wot, the one about the vicar and his amazin' going-up-in-the-air machine?"

"_No,_" said the girl, through clenched teeth. The Troll scritched his black nails against his chin.

"Ah, I've got it," he said, "you mean the one about the pirates wot run aground on the floatin' island of-"

"_No,_" the girl yelled with a suspicion of tears in her voice, "I mean the one about the blacksmith and the frog! _I want to marry you!_"

The Troll twitched his bat-ears and waggled his heavy brows and drummed his long, gnarled toes on the cobbles in honest confusion.

"But, girl," he said, finally, "I _can't_ marry you."

"And why _not_?" she demanded, her voice more than a little shrill.

"'cos you aren't a _troll_!" returned the Troll, as if it was as obvious as what year it was (609) or what color the sky was (blue) or who the Pope was (Holy Boniface IV).

It was too much. The girl stared at him for a good fifteen seconds, her ordinarily pale face mottled with a rather frightening purplish color, before kicking a sheep over the side of the bridge ("Hey!") and storming off without her flock. The Troll watched her go.

The next morning he hoisted himself over the edge of the bridge when he heard the sound of hooves clip-clopping across the cobbles only to find that it was not the girl but the youngest of her seven brothers, who took one look at the Troll and promptly went and ruined a good pair of trousers.

When he told the story at supper his brothers laughed at him, his father swore at him, and his mother crossed herself elaborately. His sister only scowled. That night, when she heard the soft sound of someone clearing their throat in the darkness outside her room, the girl went and closed the shutters without looking outside.

Of course, she had to go back to the bridge sooner or later. As the youngest and her family's only girl she was the one they could most afford to lose for the half-day it took to take the kine to pasture. But when she did find her way back, the bridge was empty and nobody's blue-green fingers were clamped on the edge. The Troll, it seemed, wasn't talking to her.

And when she dropped sticks, always feeling a bit guilty at the frivolity, they never came out on the other side of the bridge afterwards.


	3. Chapter 3

Third chapter! Whooo!

Thanks to everyone who's reviewed me thus far. I love you truly, as do the Troll and the girl with no name.

Feedback always warmly appreciated. And now-

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The March-Stepper  
Chapter Three

Once upon a time there were three billy-goats, and the name of all three was Gruff. They lived on a ten-acre estate of mean and scruffy badlands in the green heart of Dyfed, and fed there on dandelions and crabgrass. Their lot was stingy, and their daily rations meager, but they were happy- and free from predators, for the biggest goat had taught the wolves and the foxes to fear his powerfully curved horns. 

All the same, from time to time they wandered. You can live for a long time on dandelions and crabgrass but it's hardly pleasant dining and even goats like to eat out once in a while.

One day, the youngest goat was going into the hills to make himself fat when he came upon a bridge of stones set over a yawning gorge. Thinking nothing of it, he set off across it, his hooves trip-trapping across the cobbles.

Halfway across a kind of throaty gravelly voice floated up from somewhere beneath the road. "Who's that tramping across my bridge? A goat, I hope."

"I _am_ a goat," volunteered the goat, who had more courage than brains.

"And what's your name, goat?" asked the voice, with just a hint of hunger. Bells began to go off between the goat's long, feathery ears.

"I don't have to tell you," he said, his voice quavering bravely as he cast about for the source of the voice.

"But you could you tell me if you was of a mind to?" the voice said sweetly.

"What?" asked the goat. Under the bridge, something heaved a patient sigh.

"Well, you do have one, don't you?"

"Well, _yes_, in fact," said the goat, squinting hard, "but my brother told me not to talk to-"

And the Troll came _up._ The goat took in all seven dripping green knobbly toothy bat-eared knock-kneed ham-fisted black-eyed hatched-faced drip-nosed feet of him and gave a plaintive whimper (as I'm sure you would have done too, if you were a goat.)

"-trolls," he finished, a bit belatedly. "Oh, sod, you're going to eat me, aren't you. Don't lie."

"'s a fair cop," admitted the Troll, "but it may interest you to know that I take no pleasure innit."

"Why is that?" asked the youngest goat, rolling his buttery eyes wildly in his head and stamping his slender hooves on the cobbles.

"I," said the Troll, dramatically, "have been unlucky in love!"

"Surely not!" opined the goat.

"Nah, it's God's truth!" insisted the Troll, raising one ponderous hand high in the air. "Spurned the love of me life, I did, not one week ago, on account of she weren't a troll! Goat meat's got no savor to me now. I'm a broken troll, I am."

"If goat meat's got no savor," suggested the goat, "then perhaps you don't need to eat me after all?"

"Ah, well, not sure as I would go that far," returned the Troll, shaking his mossy head. "You know the Rules."

The goat nodded glumly as the Troll plucked him carefully up off the ground between two gnarled green fingers. He knew the Rules.

"But wait," he squeaked as the Troll opened his tooth-choked maw to swallow him down. "Have you considered the feelings of your beloved on the subject?"

"Wot?" said the Troll, with a terrible downswept frown.

"Well," said the goat, skinny legs waggling frantically in the air, "you might stop a moment to think about how _she_ must feel, being spurned by a fine figure of a Troll such as yourself."

"Ach," said the Troll, contemplatively, "well, fairly terrible, I would imagine."

"Exactly!" cried the goat. "Fairly terrible indeed! How can you stand to put her through such grief?"

A leathery tear rolled down the Troll's cheek and splattered miserably on the cobbles. "What sort of Troll am I?" he bawled. "Why, I must be some kinda a a monster, goin' and doin' a rotten thing like that!"

The goat nibbled a moment on the supple webbing between the Troll's thumb and forefinger and found it inedible. "You must go to her!" he insisted. "Troll, you must go to her! There may yet be time!"

"But she ain't a _troll_," snuffled the Troll. "Can't get hitched to her if she ain't a _troll._ That's in the rules, that is." The goat butted his soft, velvety head against the Troll's hand comfortingly.

"Chin up," he said, "nobody's saying you have to marry her right away. You're in the prime of your life, you are! Time enough to sow some wild oats before you settle down. As for her not being a troll-" and here he winked experimentally- "well, there's ways around that, aren't there?"

The Troll stopped blubbing and regarded the goat carefully, holding him out at arm's length- a tall order, for trolls have long, long arms. "'cor," he said, "you ain't half smart, for a goat."

"I try," said the goat, modestly.

"S'ppose I know wot I got to do now," said the Troll, screwing up his face in determination.

"Oh?" asked the goat, widening his eyes in polite curiosity.

"Yeah," said the Troll, "I got to go and find that no-name girl and beg her to take me back. Won't be easy, bein' as it's an affront to Trollish dignity an' all that, but you gotta do what you gotta do, am I right?"

"As rain," affirmed the goat. "May I go, sir?"

"Nah," said the Troll, "you're coming with."

"Well then," said the goat brightly, "I'll just scamper along beside you, eh? Would hate to trouble you unduly."

The Troll grinned horribly. "No trouble at all," he said, and opened his toothy mouth as wide as it would go, which for a troll is very wide indeed.

"Oh," said the goat in a small voice. "Well, it was certainly worth a try."

A few moments later the Troll emerged, rubbing his belly in contentment, and loped off along the sheep road to Dyfed.

Once upon a time there was a girl who loved a Troll on account of the stories he told her- or the half-stories, because she had learned that Trolls aren't good at telling whole ones- or at least her Troll wasn't, if she could call him _her_ Troll at this point.

That was the problem, when you got right down to it, and the girl was of a direct and penetrating mind. The Troll had spurned her girlish advances. And if the Troll would not marry her (she reasoned) then she would have to find someone who would.

So on a fine warm evening when the planting was done and her seven brothers and two uncles and mother and father were all comfortably sprawled across three crowded horsehair mattresses, the girl crept out of the cot in the kitchen where she slept and found a burlap sack in a cupboard.

In it she tucked two meat pies, a handful of small, sour apples, half a wheel of cheese, and (after a few moments of ferocious squinting indecision) her mother's second-best kitchen knife, the one with the small curving nick halfway up the blade. Then, slinging the sack over one small shoulder, she stole silently into the summer night.

An hour later, she had eaten one of the pies and several of the apples and a good third of the cheese and found herself homesick scarcely half a mile from her own front step. Her tired back was longing for her cot in the kitchen and her feet were longing for her warm, soft slippers. The sack slipped from her stiff fingers and she plopped to the ground at the foot of a stately beech, feeling thirsty and lonely and generally sorry for herself.

But then she heard a noise- no, not a noise, but a full fledged Noise- in the branches above her, a kind of rustle of leaves and a skittle of legs and a soft hissing like a kettle on the warm hearth. "Is there someone there?" she asked, cautiously, climbing to her feet.

There was a brief pause.

"No," came the answer from somewhere in the sighing foliage. "Nobody'sss here, even a little. Go back to sssleep, little girl." The voice was soft and whispery with just a touch of pride in it. The girl frowned.

"I wasn't asleep," she complained. "And if you weren't there, then you wouldn't be able to answer properly, would you?"

"Oh, ssshame," hissed the Noise, "thisss one'sss a sssmart one, isssn't ssshe? Sssmart little girl."

"Come down," called the girl imperiously, and to her surprise the Noise obeyed. It came down on four legs speckled with pale blue glittering scales, dragging a glimmering, lashing tail behind it, with bright little glowing yellow eyes shining proudly from its small, triangular head. It was, in short, a Blue Salamander.

"You ssshouldn't be out by yourssself ssso late, little girl," said the Salamander. "You might meet the Wild Hart."

"The Wild Hart?" asked the girl, curious despite herself.

"He'sss abroad tonight," noted the Salamander, casting a superstitious glance over one thorny leg.

"I thought," said the girl, carefully, "that he was only for trolls."

"He _isss_," said the Salamander, sounding mildly offended at the question, "but the Wild Hart isss not to be trifled with, all the sssame."

The girl narrowed her eyes, for the Troll had told her of the Blue Salamander and she knew that he was not to be trusted. "Are you going to put a spell on me like you did to the Turk in the story?"

"Perisssh the thought," hissed the Salamander. With a decisive nod, the girl sat back down again, and the Salamander twined the rest of the way down the trunk and came to rest in a languid limber heap on her sensible brown boots.

"Ssso what are you doing out by yourssself ssso late?" he asked, probingly. The girl scowled, then softened.

"Looking for love," she said, tossing her shoulders back in a careless shrug. "You haven't seen it, have you?"

"No," said the Salamander, "but I would love you, if only I could."

The girl frowned at that. "Why can't you?"

"Sssalamandersss don't love," he explained. "We're not built for it. I haven't a heart, you sssee."

"How horrid!" said the girl. The Salamander twitched his glittering bejeweled tail without much emotion.

"It'sss a living," he said. "Perhapsss you could ask the Vicar where to find love? He'sss frightfully sssmart, that Vicar, even if he isss a churchman."

"Do you think he would know?" asked the girl, suddenly sure that the Vicar was her last, best chance to find what she was looking for.

"Nobody knowsss more than the Vicar," said the Salamander firmly, "unlessss it'sss the Wild Hart himssself, and it would take a fool's fool to ssstrike a deal with the likesss of him-"

But here the girl shushed him, for she heard a sound coming from down the cobbled road, a trip-trapping of hooves and a warm, breathy snort. The Salamander's blue scales blanched to the color of freshly squeezed milk.

"It'sss the Wild Hart!" he hissed. "Hide!"

And with a crash and a rustle they dove into the bushes and brambles by the side of the road.


	4. Chapter 4

Fourth chapter! I'd say that the fulcrum of probability has swung back towards me actually finishing this at some point, a possibility that fills me with hysterical pleasure. I actually have plans for 'March Stepper' after it's done with, so the sooner I've finished writing it the sooner I can start with the editorial process.

Feedback is like heroin; that is to say, I'm very fond of it. Now read on!

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The March Stepper  
Chapter Four

Once upon a time there was a Wild Hart that had a job to do. It's job was to range to and fro across the length and breadth of green England, making sure that the course of things ran smooth amongst the Trolls and monsters and fair folk of Albion until the day when the age of such creatures ended and the age of men began and it was allowed, at last, to rest. All storybook creatures feared the Hart for this reason, and when the Blue Salamander caught the sound of his hooves trip-trapping up the road he scarpered into the underbrush and the girl who loved the Troll along with him.

They crouched there in the brambles of a blueberry patch, the low-slung Salamander glittering fitfully, the girl shifting uncomfortably and occasionally going "ouch" because the thorns were very sharp and her clothes were very thin.

"Husssh!" hissed the Salamander. "He'll sssee usss, and then what a messss we'll be in!"

Obediently, the girl froze stock-still, and just as soon as she had done it the Wild Hart came prancing into view.

He was a big buck, that Hart all Trolls were waiting for- fifteen hands high, knotted with muscle and velvety with fur and bristly with antlers. Before their eyes- they hardly dared blink- he cantered to a stop and stood there snuffling the warm damp night air. His eye was a glowing red like a banked coal. The Salamander, on the other hand, had gone white all over and was trembling badly ("Hush!" whispered the girl.)

Then there was the sound of a horn somewhere to the west of Dyfed and the Hart's neck swiveled, the Hart's ears pricked, and the Hart's legs leapt up to carry him away down the road and away from the companions. A few minutes passed ("He's gone. Is it safe to come out?" "Ssshut up! Ssshut up! He could be lissstening ssstill!") and then, with much brushing-off of knees, the girl and the Salamander came out of the brush and stood, catching their breath, on the road once more.

"What would he have done with us if he had caught us?" asked the girl when she felt quite ready to move on. The Salamander did a nervous sort of running-in-circles dance.

"He would have looked at usss," said the Salamander, "with his sssad eyesss, that'sss all."

"That doesn't sound too bad," allowed the girl.

"Ssspoken like a child," snorted the Salamander, and the girl fell into a black snit that did not subside until he announced, rather guiltily, that he would lead the way to the Vicar, and scurried off down the road.

So on they went, down muddy footpaths and up and down rolling hills, over low crumbling Roman walls and under dripping branches and across streams and bridges, the girl peering carefully over the side of each one to check for trolls.

"Are you sure you know where you're going?" asked the girl from time to time.

"I know where the Vicar livesss!" the Salamander invariably snapped back.

At dawn they found their way to a little clearing in the trees with a merry fire burning in a circle of stones and an old kettle whistling away in the coals and a wagon that must have one been festively painted but was now peeling and shabby parked off to the side. Around the fire were three gentlemen having their tea in old tin cups.

"Hello," said the girl, "who are you, then?"

"We be tinkers," growled the one with the long, black moustache and the white cotton shirt slowly going yellow about the seams and the golden rings winking from every finger, "peddlin' our wares t' th' goodwives of Dyfed."

"We be pilgrims," interrupted the one with the eyepatch and the pegleg and the tattoo of a mermaid on his bulging bicep, "on a voyage o' spiritual discovery."

"Nay, nay," whined the short one with the brightly colored feather in his tricorner hat and the smoking pipe dangling from one hand and a hook for the other, "I thought 'twas agreed that we was to be Moorish explorers, writin' a traveler's guide to England!"

The girl bore this patiently, even though it was obvious even in passing that the gentlemen were pirates. They had cutlasses thrust into their belts, knives peeking out of their high leather boots, and there was a scruffy bottle-green parrot flying in lazy circles around their camp. All the same, they were clearly pirates on hard times- the nearest body of water was fifty miles away, and there wasn't so much as a rowboat in evidence, unless it was in the wagon.

"Isss tinkering ssso dangerousss, then?" the Salamander hissed snidely. At the sound of his voice the short pirate leapt into the tattooed pirate's arms, causing him to say a very ungentlemanly word as he lost balance and went head-over-heels to the forest floor and spilt his tea on the bearded pirate, who leapt up with a howl and put his foot in the campfire by mistake.

"A s-sea s-serpent!" squeaked the short pirate, oblivious to the chaos he had caused.

"A Sssalamander," corrected the Salamander, turning an offended shade of periwinkle. The short pirate blinked.

"Oh, aye," he said, "that's all right then." And he sat back down on his stool.

"You're not gentlemen at all, are you?" asked the girl in an accusing sort of voice. "You're pirates."

"Aye, lass," said the one with the tattoo, getting to his feet and pouring out the rest of the tea on the bearded pirate's smoldering boot to put it out. "I be Edrigu of the Rose, the bleedin' terror of Araby an' the lion of Morrocco, and this be Martelbane- that's him with the fine moustache- what sank a dozen galleys armed with nothin' more than a bit of string and a small square-rigged sloop at Gibraltar, and this be Mad Anton, who-"

"Oh, I'll never remember all that," insisted the girl, stamping her foot. "I'll call _you_ Moustache, (she said, pointing to Martelbane) and _you_ Mermaid, and I'll call _you_ Feather."

"Fair enough," admitted the pirate, " I'd never remember our names meself if one of them weren't mine. I be Mermaid, cap'n of the _Ransom_, and this be Moustache, the bosun, and this be Feather, the bosun's mate. And we be the Pirates of the Floatin' Island."

"Oh, my," said the girl, and "the Floating Island?" said the Salamander.

"Aye," said Feather, "the very same! Came upon it all sudden-like, we did, and when Cap'n Mermaid figured out why the beaches bobbed up an' down so-"

"I've heard this story," said the girl, and "I haven't," said the Salamander.

"-well, we reckoned an island what could float would be a sight sounder in the water than any boat you could build, so cap'n ordered it rigged up with sails and we scuttered the _Ransom_, usherin' in a new and profitable career in the growing field o' topographic piracy!"

"Then what happened?" asked the girl.

"Thought you knew the story," said Mermaid, nastily.

"I heard it," explained the girl, "from a Troll." And all the pirates went 'ah!' and 'hm!' and nodded wisely. _They_ knew about trolls.

"Well?" demanded the Salamander after a short solemn silence. "Tell usss what became of the Floating Island!"

But the silence dragged on until the girl feared that the pirates had fallen ill, or had their voices stolen by some enchantment. Finally, Moustache gave a short, embarrassed cough and looked up.

"Sank," he admitted.

Once upon a time there was a Troll on a mission. His mission was to find the farmgirl who had professed to love him and who he had spurned, and throw himself on her mercy, and beg for her to take him back. It would not be easy, and it would certainly be dangerous if the Wild Hart was abroad, but there were times in life when a Troll had to do what a Troll had to do.

Unfortunately, that no-name girl had proven very difficult to find. He had found what seemed to be her house and peered in every window (Trolls can't go through doors. It's all to do with the Rules, I expect), but all he saw was a mess of fathers and mothers and brothers and uncles sleeping on three crowded horsehair mattresses and the wrapping from a bit of cheese under a table.

He had found the paddock where the sheep were corralled but after an hour of wheedling, diplomacy, veiled threats and all-out shouting he was forced to concede that his original hunch had been right and sheep did not, in fact, possess the power of speech. At this point he was seriously considering waking someone up and eating them until they told him what he wanted to know. And that was when he found the goat.

"Hello," said the goat.

"How d'you do," said the Troll, cautiously. They stood there in the road for a moment, staring at one another.

"Have you seen my brother?" said the goat, his manners courtly. He was a trim young goat, with polished hooves and downy fur and a neat corkscrew of beard on his pointed chin.

"Eh," said the Troll, a trifle guiltily, "nah, not really. Have you seen a little girl, about yea high, asks a lot of questions?"

"'Not really' isn't much of an answer," said the goat. "I would think you would be able to provide a definitive yes or no."

"Well," said the Troll, "maybe I did see him. Wot does your brother look like?"

"He looks like me," explained the goat, "only slightly smaller, and not so neat. He's also a goat, you see."

"You don't say," said the Troll. "'ere, let me ask you one of those questions where the answer don't matter on account of the premise of the question ain't necessarily verifiably true."

"Would that be a hypothetical question?" asked the goat, generously.

"That's the one," said the Troll.

"Let's hear it," said the goat.

"Wot if I was to tell you," said the Troll, delicately, "that some sort of horrible beast tossed your brother into his cavernous maw, hooves an' horns an' all, an' crunched him up an' ate him on the spot?"

"Well," said the goat, "I should imagine that I would be pretty angry if you were to tell me such a thing."

"Yeah, yeah," said the Troll, "but _how_ angry, would you say? Are we talkin' kinda sorta 'oh, damn the luck' sorta angry or are we talkin' blisterin' volcano of wrath?"

"I'm not sure," said the goat, "what a volcano is."

"'s like a mountain, only more on fire," explained the Troll.

"Ah," said the goat. "Well, I imagine I would be more or less of a cauldron full of boiling rage as a result of receiving news of that kind." The Troll nodded glumly.

"Yeah," he said, "I kinda figured."

"But it's a moot point," suggested the goat with a kind of edge in his polite, tinny voice, "because that was a hypothetical question, right?"

"Er," said the Troll, miserably.

"Because if it wasn't, I should be obliged to avenge my brother's death."

"The thing is," said the Troll, weakly, "well-"

"But of course if you don't know anything about it-"

"Oh, damn," said the Troll, "out with it then, I ate your brother whole, horns an' all, when he crossed my path at the sheep-bridge and now I'm going to eat you as well on account of I've gone and worked up an appetite shoutin' at things and goat goes down a treat on an empty stomach."

"You scoundrel!" cried the goat. "You'll pay for this, beast!" And he lowered his curved horns and ran headlong at the Troll until the Troll arrested his progress by giving out a good old Trollish roar, the kind where you have to unlimber your jaw and gulp down a great big breath of air and then scream so loud that your teeth rattle in your mouth like knucklebone dice and I'll stop there because actually you more or less have to be a Troll to pull it off. The goat went tumbling head over heels and when he came to a shuddering knock-kneed rest the Troll picked him up and tossed him back into his cavernous maw like a freshly peeled grape.

There was a squeal and the top half of the goat emerged out of the Troll's mouth, wobbling desperately as his lower hooves scrabbled roughly for purchase against the Troll's tongue.

"Wait! Wait!" he cried, planting his front legs painfully on the Troll's curled upper lip. "I think I _did_ see the girl you're looking for!"

"'ou on't 'ay?" said the Troll, who was finding it difficult to articulate clearly with a hairy mouthful of goat.

"Yes! Yes, she went- that way!" said the goat, pointing wildly with his left front hoof, losing balance, and tumbling back into the Troll's mouth with a despairing cry.

"'ou've een ery helful" said the Troll, and swallowed.


	5. Chapter 5

Here's chapter five! I've got to be honest, I'm not loving it as much as the first four, but I was a day and a half past my deadline as it was and sometimes you've just got to hook a chain around her middle and drag her down, if you know what I'm saying. Ah, well, I'll iron it out in syndication.

Feedback is like a kindergarten teacher who gives you one of her kidneys when you need a transplant: nice. Thanks very much to everyone who commented on chapter four!

And now: onward!

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The March-Stepper  
Chapter Five

Once upon a time there was a motley trio of hard-luck pirates whose names were Mermaid, Moustache, and Feather. They had fallen a long way from the lofty plateau where they had started off as the notorious Pirates of the Floating Island, mostly on account of the Floating Island in question had developed an unexpected but extremely troublesome tendency to sink to the bottom of the ocean in the wee hours of the morning, taking most of the crew and all of the loot with it. Well, I say 'tendency', but in truth it only happened the once.

The fortunes of these pirates improved somewhat when they chanced upon a Blue Salamander and a girl with no name- or, rather, a Blue Salamander and a girl with no name chanced upon them in the leafy forests of Dyfed. The girl then proceeded to make them an unbelievable offer.

"Would you like to come along?" she said. "We're going to see the Vicar. Maybe he knows where you can find another island."

Mermaid and Moustache and Feather exchanged startled looks. "That be right generous of you, miss," Mermaid explained, "but I think we're out of th' floatin' island business for the time being. Ain't any profit in it if they're going to go sinkin' on us all the time, is there? Thanks all the same."

"Probably for the bessst," hissed the Salamander. "The Wild Hart walksss tonight. You'll be sssafer here."

Feather bristled. "We ain't afraid of no Wild Hart," he announced in a high blustering sort of voice. "I'd hate to meet the Hart could shudder us, ain't that right, boys?"

"You know it, Feather," said Mermaid. "Aye," said Moustache.

"Oh, come on then," said the girl, "aren't you even the tiniest bit afraid of him? Everyone else I meet seems to be."

"No! Never! Not even the tiniest bit!" insisted Feather.

"That's God's truth, right there," said Mermaid. "Aye," said Moustache.

"Nonsssenssse," said the Salamander. "Everybody fearsss the Wild Hart."

"We don't," said Mermaid, bravely. "Feather's right. Ain't no Hart in England that could scare the likes of us. We're bleedin' pirates, by thunder! Terrors of the seas, am I right? The Pirates of the Floatin' Island, that's what we are! Huh! Ain't that right?"

"Full well it is," said Feather, jumping excitedly to his feet. "We'll make nice venison sausages of the blighter! We'll polish his antlers for him!"

"Aye," said Moustache, thumping the ground with his glittering fist.

"So you'll go with us, then?" asked the girl, excitedly. "Oh, please say you will."

There was an awkward silence. The pirates exchanged horrified glances.

"Why… yes," said Feather, slowly. "'cos… 'cos… 'cos mayhap you'll need someone t' protect you… from th'… from-"

"-from the Wild Hart," said Mermaid, "the one we ain't a'scairt of."

"Aye," said Moustache, looking none too thrilled about it.

"Sssplendid," said the Salamander, smugly.

They quickly tore down their campground and put out the fire. The teapot and tin cups were stacked neatly on a nicked wooden tray and stashed in the back of the painted wagon which, after a moment, Moustache grudgingly took the poles of and wheeled off towards the Vicar's house. Mermaid and Feather and the girl trudged off behind him with the Salamander twining around their ankles.

"So," said Mermaid, "who's this Vicar, then? I haven't heard his name afore."

"Never heard of the Vicar?" asked the girl. "Oh, he's frightfully smart, the vicar. He's built himself all kinds of wonderful things."

"Like that clockwork ssservant," hissed the Salamander, "do you remember? or the magic bootsss he made for Theodric."

Mermaid scowled and bent down to adjust his peg leg. "Been out to sea a long time," he muttered, "man misses things when he's out to sea. Ruddy Vicar."

"You haven't even heard the story of his Incredible Going-Up-In-The-Air machine?" said the girl, a little horrified. "You must've heard that, at least."

"Tell it," invited Feather. "It'll pass th' time well enough."

"Once upon a time," began the girl, but the Salamander interrupted, his scales flashing ultramarine in indignation.

"You alwaysss get to tell the ssstories," he hissed angrily. "I know thisss one!"

"Well, go on then," said the girl, a little irately. "Tell."

"Thank you," said the Salamander with crushing dignity, "I will."

He cleared his throat and said:

"Once upon a time there wasss a Vicar who lived in Dyfed, and he wasss wondrousss sssmart. He built himssself many wonderful thingsss, and built many wonderful thingsss for the goodfolk of Dyfed to eassse their livesss, for that was the sssort of man the Vicar wasss."

"But he wasss often dissstracted from his dutiesss, for the Vicar wasss a man who thought deeply about all sssortsss of thingsss. The thing he thought about the mossst wasss the nature and location of Paradissse, what you Chrissstiansss call Heaven, for he had a burning curiousssity, you sssee, about what lay beyond the ssspan of mortal yearsss."

"He determined that the mossst likely location for the Heaven he sssought wasss in the sssky, for the sssky is, asss we know, the home of God and hisss angelsss. The Vicar thought and thought and thought sssome more about it and in the end he decided to build, with his own two handsss, a machine that would take him up to Heaven. It would be an amazing Going-Up-In-The-Air Machine."

"So he tinkered and he puttered and he pottered and he fiddled for a year and a day, and tore it down and built it back up again sssix or ssseven times, before finally he had gotten it the way he wanted it. Everyone in Dyfed gathered the next morning to sssee the Vicar off on his expedition to Heaven. But no sssooner had he sssat down in hisss amazing going-up-in-the-air machine than he gave a cry of dessspair."

"Why?" asked Feather, rapt with attention.

"_Husssh_!" insisted the Salamander. "The Vicar had meant for hisss contraption to be powered by sssteam, you sssee. Only he had forgotten one thing, for there wasss not a flame in all of England hot enough to boil asss much water asss hisss assscent would require."

"Then what happened?" growled Mermaid.

"Can't go around asking people to tell you about things they don't know about, boy," snapped the girl, doing a hoarse, passable impression of the Troll. "That's in the rules, that is."

"T-t-troll!" squeaked Feather, and leapt into Mermaid's arms. "God rot you, Feather!" roared Mermaid, as he fell over for the second time that day and landed quite hard on his behind in the crackling brown leaves.

"No, no," replied the girl, hastily. "I'm sorry, Feather, it's just me. It's only that that's what my Troll used to tell me when I asked how a story ended. I don't know what happened next."

"Oh, that's all right, then," said Feather, and laughed uneasily, for to his ears it had been a very good impression indeed.

"What do you want this Vicar for, anyways?" asked Mermaid, after he had flailed about on the ground for a bit and gotten up and dusted himself off and given Feather a kick and lost balance and fallen down and gotten up again.

"Oh," said the girl, dismissively, "I'm looking for Love. I don't suppose you know where I could find it?"

All the pirates leered as one, and I'll tell you why when you're older.

Once upon a time there was a Troll who was very unhappy indeed, partly because he had been unlucky in love but principally because he had a sneaking suspicion that the goat had _lied_ to him- and he had seemed like such an honest and forbearing creature!

But he had followed the fellow's directions to the letter only to find himself exactly where he started, smack in the middle of his very own bridge with not so much as an inkling of where to go next. He spent a few bitter moments imagining what he was going to do with that Goat when he caught up with him before he remembered that he had gobbled him up not an hour before and that made him feel a little better, not to mention a little fuller.

All the same, one Troll could only take so much, and the Troll sat heavily down on the cobbles to have a good sulk.

"Ain't fair," he muttered to himself. "Did my best, didn't I? Showed willing and all that. It's a bloody scandal is what it is. Huh, stinkin goats and their stinking advice. Oughtta have just stayed home. Wasted a whole stinkin day onna wild goat chase. Girl's probably married off to some bloody farmer by now, and I wish him joy of her. Wot was I supposed to have done, then? Bloody stupid Troll."

But by and by his voice tapered off into a low, miserable snuffling. That was when he heard the sound of slender hooves trip-trapping over his bridge and looked up, wiping his great hooked nose with the back of his gnarled green hand.

"Who's there?" he demanded, tearfully. "I'm warnin you, I'm in no sort of mood!"

"I'm sorry to disturb you," came the answer in a deep sort of gravelly voice. The Troll squinted as the trip-trapper and bridge-crosser came into view.

"Oho," he growled, "another goat, is it? Come to give me advice, have you, goat? Come to tell me which way to go next? Cor, you've got a lot of nerve, haven't you, comin here like this. I oughtta tear you limb from limb."

"I wish to blazes you would call me by my name," said the goat, a shade indignant.

"Wot's your name, then?" bellowed the Troll. "Tell me, so I can eat you up!"

"My name," said the goat, "is Gruff."

"Is it?" demanded the Troll. "You're the biggest goat I've ever clapped eyes on, Gruff, and that's no lie. What'd you eat to make you get so big?"

"Dandelions and crab-grass," said Gruff, "and oats, where I could get them."

The Troll squinted harder. "And you're the brawniest goat I ever did see," he said, "and that's no lie, either. What have you done to make you get so strong?"

"Fought wolves in the winter and mad dogs in the fall," said Gruff, "and ran from the Wild Hart when we crossed paths, I'm not ashamed to admit."

The Troll's eyes were wet black slits in his leathery green face from squinting. "And your horns," he said, "your horns look harder and curlier and generally more fearsome than any goat I've yet made the acquaintance of, and if that's a lie may I have the Hart for a husband. What is it makes them so braw?"

"Mother's milk and many a tumble," said Gruff, "and a little magic, between you and me, for a little goes a long way where magic is concerned."

"That's so," said the Troll. "You're far from average where goats is concerned, ain't you, Gruff?"

"I get by," said Gruff. "You haven't seen my brothers, have you?"

The Troll scratched his head with five mossy green fingers at once. "Don't suppose you can tell me what they look like?"

"I could," said Gruff, pawing at the cobbles with one hoof, "but I think you already know, for I can hear hooves trip-trapping in your belly and smell goat's blood on your breath."

"Aye," admitted the Troll, "I believe that you can, at that, for I ate your littlest brother on this very bridge and your middle brother not an hour past a league east of here. Would it help at all if I was to say I was sorry?"

"Not a bit," said Gruff.

"Nah," said the Troll, "didn't think so, really, but you can't blame me for tryin, can you?" He flapped his ears miserably. "So, I suppose the only thing to do now is fight, innit?"

Gruff dipped his head. "That was what I had in mind. Unless you had a better suggestion?"

"I got nothin," said the Troll. "I ain't exactly what you'd call one of nature's great thinkers."

"Well, then," said the goat, and charged. The Troll hunkered down and grabbed him by the great curved horns and tossed him up twenty feet in the air and unhinged his jaw to catch him in his big red wet mouth but got the trajectory all wrong and Gruff kicked him in the neck on the way down and sprawled in a heap as the Troll's hands shot to his throat and got up and butted him in the ankle so his leg gave way and he fell to the ground but he fell on top of Gruff and Gruff only barely squeezed his way out and the Troll got up and kicked Gruff as hard as he could and Gruff went flying but landed on his feet and pawed the ground and lowered his head and came barreling down the bridge at the troll who bent down to get him by the horns again but he twisted his neck and slipped past the great big grasping hands and butted the Troll as hard as he possibly could right in the chest and the Troll took three steps back quite fast and tripped over the side of the bridge and fell fifty feet through the air flailing his arms because he had quite forgotten that he hadn't any wings and would have been too heavy for them to do much good even if he had and smashed into the river, far below.

Gruff stuck out his neck cautiously and peered down into the cavernous gorge. When he was satisfied that nothing was stirring in the muddy brown water, he went trip-trapping on down the bridge to find his aged mother and sing her sad goat-songs for the deaths of her youngest sons.

Far below, the Troll groaned weakly and let his poor aching head rest in the muddy pillow of the riverbed.


	6. Chapter 6

Oh, yes, dear readers- I am _back._ Writer's block be damned. I feel _good _about Chapter Six. Which is lucky, because there's only one left!

Expect the seventh and final chapter in the general vicinity of Friday? _Maybe._ Tomorrow I have a busy schedule of watching Veronica Mars, playing Halo, and writing a comprehensive bibliography for my five-page paper on the role of the Knight of the Mirrors in Don Quixote as he relates to the teachings of the eighteenth century philosopher and utter rat-bastard David Hume- in no particular order- and at some point in the week I'm going to have to start pulling my weight in the writing process of the one-act play I'm co-writing with my girlfriend (I'm not at liberty to divulge any details at this point but there's a character named _Doctor Stradivarius_) and wow, that was kind of a run-on sentence, wasn't it?

Anyways, I'd rather have a comment in front of me than a frontal lobotomy, by which I mean to say that I treasure each and every scrap of feedback and you are all wonderful people. Now read!

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The March-Stepper  
Chapter Six

Once upon a time there was a Troll who was having a terrible day. Now, when most people say they've had a terrible day, they mean that the cart got stuck and their boots leaked and they forgot their umbrella and it was porridge for breakfast- _again_- and there was a sniffle in their nose and an ache in their belly and a pain in their tooth and their afternoon tea wasn't hot enough and left a funny taste in their mouth.

Not the Troll. He was used to wet feet and head colds (as comes from living under a bridge, which is a miserable thing indeed) and he didn't even know what porridge _was_, except that he had a sneaking suspicion that it was some sort of queer river mollusk. When _he_ said he was having a terrible day he meant it.

And it had been a terrible day indeed, even without lukewarm tea. Why, since he had gotten up he had lost his true love, hiked miles out of his way, trembling all the while and half expecting to hear the trip-trapping footsteps of the Wild Hart coming up behind him, been lied to by a goat, and jumped- well, fallen- well, been _knocked_ off his own bridge by a braw and brawny he-goat going by the name of Gruff who had taken exceptional umbrage to the Troll's having gone and eaten two of his brothers.

"And that," said the Troll, glumly "is a _terrible_ day." Only it came out a little indistinctly because he had put his head underwater.

After a while when he was feeling a little bit better he got up and lurched off towards home, snuffling over his aching bones and his sore head and his poor bruised muscles. The one bright side of it was that he had taken his fall close to home.

The sun was rising but it was still dim when he schlupped his tired body- all eleven blue-green knobbly twisted lank wiry feet of it- under the shadow of the bridge. His big feet splish-splashed over the stones of the riverbed as he waded over to the big cast-iron kettle with CHRISTOPHER carved on it and picked it up with one hand. With the other he fumbled about for the necessary flint and steel, found them on the second try, and lit a fire on a broad rock.

As soon as the kettle was on he splashed off on other business. "Now where'd I put it…" he muttered. "Ah!" Plunging his arm into the chill water up to the elbow he pulled a dirty clammy sopping wet blanket out of the river and draped it over his shoulders with a wet slap of damp wool against warty green skin. After a moment he pulled the blanket over his head, clasped it in place under the chin with one mossy hand, and stumbled off.

The biggest and flattest rock under the bridge was where the Troll kept his bedraggled little flock- half a dozen kine, legs folded under them, eyes half-closed in an expression of wooly indifference. From time to time one of them would utter a long baaaah of contentment. Not much got to sheep.

The Troll plucked one of them from the rock and clasped it to his chest with five froggy green fingers. The sheep bore this patiently and if it was discomfited when the Troll plopped down to sit cross-legged in the water it gave no indication of it.

When he felt he could wait no longer, the Troll got up and shuffled over to the kettle. He poured a cup of strong black tea into a dainty cracked china cup, picked it up delicately between two fingers, and shuffled back to the bit of riverbed that he had decided for whatever reason was more comfortable than any other bit of riverbed.

After spending a long moment rearranging blanket, sheep, and china, he had everything the way he liked it. Raising the cup elegantly to his curled lips, he slurped down the tea in one gulp. It was lukewarm.

"Figures," he muttered.

Once upon a time there was a girl with no name, a Blue Salamander, a trio of hard-luck pirates, and a parrot whose given name was Gunpowder Jack, except that he wasn't very important in the grand scheme of things and anyways the pirates had left him behind at the campsite- probably for the best, as they had never been more than indifferent masters and in England's cold climate it would need more than a little help to get by.

Eventually Gunpowder Jack (who secretly thought of himself as Mwenye) found his way into the custody of a blacksmith called Mulligan (although his friends called him Beef) and spent a happy winter in his toasty forge in Pembrokeshire, where he grew luxuriant and colorful in the smoky warmth and picked up the sorts of words that blacksmiths use when they discover they've been standing a bit too close to the fire and their aprons are on fire.

When Gunpowder Jack's language had become far too salty for the blacksmith's wife (who was called Sara), she nagged at her husband until he got rid of the bird, exchanging him for a small bag of coffee beans from a passing sailor (Johnson). The sailor and his parrot were inseparable until his ship (the Mer-maid) put it at the port of Casablanca and Gunpowder Jack went absent without leave and found his way, after many adventures too boring to recount, over the Sahara and back to the dripping brown-green forests of Africa from whence his mother had came. He lived there happily for many years until dying tragically in an unfortunate incident involving a groshawk.

None of this is particularly important to the story. I just thought you might like to know.

Anyways, once upon a time there was a girl with no name and a Blue Salamander and a few pirates, and they were all of them journeying through the forest looking for the Vicar, who was a frightfully smart man and who could thus be relied on to answer the questions they were going to ask him- the girl for the last known whereabouts and general dimensions of Love, the pirates for career advice in the new landbound economy, and the Salamander for his own, intensely private questions, the like of which he had not divulged to his companions.

To pass the time they were playing at I Spy. The Salamander with his quick little ice-fleck eyes was ahead by seven points.

"I ssspy," he hissed, "with my little eye, sssomething beginning with… C."

"Corsair," said Feather, immediately.

"No," said the Salamander."

"Clover?" offered the girl. The Salamander shook his angular head in resignation.

"Criminy," said Mermaid in disgust.

"That'sss not a sssomething."

"I know. I just don't care for the game."

"Crevasse?"

"Where?"

"I dunno. I just thought t'was the sort of thing ye might see in the woods."

"Maybe if you took off your ridiculous hat you'd have a better time of it."

"There's no need fer ye t' be mean."

"Shut up, Feather."

"He was makin' fun of my hat-"

"Shut up, Feather."

"Cripple?"

"That'sss the one."

"Oh, come now."

"I callsss them like I ssseesss them."

"Wonder how Salamander tastes?"

"Boys, boys! It's my turn. I'll go. I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with… T."

"Tree?"

"That would be too easssy."

"True, that. Um. Trench?"

"No, sorry."

"Doesss anyone hear that?"

"Tributary."

"Oh, well done, Moustache! Your turn."

"No, ssseriousssly. Doesss anyone-"

"I spy with m' little eye something beginning with W."

"Ye ain't wrong, lizard. I hear it too."

"Wagon?"

"Aye."

"_Thank_ you. I thought I wasss going mad."

"Um. I spy with my little eye something beginning with R."

"Kind of a low flapping, innit? Like a big sparrow'awk."

"Road?"

"Too obvious!"

"Right."

"It'sss coming from ahead. Perhapsss we should sssend up a ssscout?"

"It's not right either."

"I was just clearing the air, miss. Rock?"

"You've got it!"

"What in the blazesss" said the Salamander, "isss _that?_"

For they had come to the end of the path in a little clearing with a handsome stone cottage built in it, next to a simple, workmanlike well with daisies growing all around. But it was not the daisies or the well or the cottage that made the Salamander stop and the girl's jaw fall or the pirates to curse most saltily, but the great big wooden something casting a shadow over it and making a sort of a flapping hissing thumping noise that shook the dew from the leaves of the trees.

"I believe," said the girl, a little spellbound, "that it's an Amazing Going Up In The Air Machine." And it was.

There, hovering in the piney forest air, was what looked like a wooden rowboat hanging from a big round rippling something in a canvas bag that was stretching up towards the sky. The back half of the rowboat was taken up with hissing tin pipes and big tin buckets with steam puffing out of them and complicated things that went pop every few seconds, and there were great wooden wings with silk panels straining against the wind flapping slowly in the air with a terrible noise. In the rowboat sat a kindly old man in black with a long, long scarf and queer glass lenses over his eyes.

"It'sss the Vicar!" hissed the Salamander, scales rippling an angry turquoise as he lashed his powerful tail. "Don't let him get away!" And with a leap and a bound he flashed through the air towards the mooring rope, seizing it in his powerful teeth. The pirates charged forward with a yell and seized it in their hands, except for Moustache who seized it in his hand. But it was too late; the Vicar had already untied the other end and was holding his Going Up In The Air machine down with all his might.

"I'm sorry!" he yelled. "I'm so sorry! But I've got to go!"

"But we _need_ you!" howled the girl. "You have to help us!"

"No time, no time!" came the reply. "I'm late! Frightfully late! I'm sorry!"

"No!"

"Forgive me!"

"No!" The Vicar let go of the rope and his strange craft shot away from the earth like a cork as the mooring line fell in neat coils to the ground.

"The door!" he screamed in a dwindling voice.

The girl stamped her foot in exasperation. "What?" she screamed. "What did you say?"

"The door!" the tiny voice came back. "It explains everything! Sorr-"

And then he was gone, and the girl fought back tears as she watched the speck that was the Amazing Going Up In The Air Machine dwindle to a dot and watched that dot dwindle to a mote.

"Blassst!" said the Salamander.

"Oh, sod," said Mermaid.

"Damn!" cried the girl. "And now what are we supposed to do?"

They sat about for a few minutes, disconsolate, depressed, and stumped.

"Perhapsss," said the Salamander after a bit, "you could check the door?"

"Of course," said the girl, wildly, "the door! The door explains everything!" And she fairly skipped over to the trim little door of the Vicar's cottage, where a few sheets of parchment ruffled in the breeze, swaying on the single nail that hung them from the pulpy wood.

The girl tore them down and went through them. "It says," she read, "once upon a time-"

"-_there was a foolish old man who wanted nothing more than to travel the vaulted halls of the Firmament, and soar through the very Gates of Heaven yet living. And so he built, with his own two hands and the sweat of his brow, a skyship that would deliver him to the Sky. _

"But he was too foolish, and too old, and his skyship never flew, for there was not a Fire in all of England hot enough to fuse it. And the foolish old man wept.

"Years went by, and the old man, who was a Preacher, gave his sermons and Baptised the children and Buried the old men and forgot about his skyship. And for a time he was Happy.

"But then one day one of his parishioners came to him with a curious Egg that he had found in the Chicken-Coops but which yet was not the Egg of a chicken. And the Preacher, who did not know he was a Fool, consented to examine it.

"He kept it in his Rectory for seven nights and six days. And he found that the Egg was warm to the touch, and that there it was curious Heavy, as if there was a Stone inside it. But in it was no stone.

"On the seventh day the egg hatched. There was no Chick in it but rather a queer Lizard with Wings on its back which was like nothing the old man who was a Preacher had yet seen. 'What are you?' asked the Preacher, and the Lizard said, 'my name is Dragon, what are you?'

"'I am a Preacher,' said the Preacher, 'and I have heard of Dragons. I have heard that they can breath Fire.'

"'Well enough,' said the Dragon, and he blew a ball of Fire the size of a man's Head that warmed the rectory considerable.

"'I have heard of Dragons,' said the Preacher, 'I have heard they have fearsome Claws.'

"'Fearsome enough,' said the Dragon, and he struck a deep Gouge in the Preacher's rude table.

"'I have heard of Dragons,' said the Preacher, 'I have heard that they can Fly.'

"'Alas,' said the Dragon, 'this is our Tragedie, for those who say that Dragons may Fly tell errant Stories. We have Wings, but we are not Birds, for Birds are light enough that their Wings might bear them, but Dragons weigh too much. They say we Fly and breath Fire, but only the last is true.' And he breathed Fire again, and the Preacher saw that here was a flame hotter than any yet in England.

"And so I have embarked on a Great Journey, taking my Dragon with me, for all Dragons desire to Fly, though they have not the strength. They say that I am old and a Fool but even so it makes me sad to leave them- the Farmers, the Goodwives, the children of Dyfed.

"Perhaps my skyship will Fly, and we will storm the very Gates of Heaven.

"Perhaps not. But Men desire to Fly as Dragons do, and I feel certain that, whether or not I see with these living eyes the country of the LORD, I have completed the great Mission of my Life.

"His love be with you. I sign, the Vicar." 

The girl read this two or three times. Then, with finality, she laid it down on the Vicar's doorstep, right next to the Vicar's broken old boots.

"I suppose I feel better for knowing the story," she said, "but all the same it's rather too much, isn't it? To have come all this way for so little? I can't help but feel a little- well, a little _betrayed_. That's all right, isn't it? It's almost as if someone doesn't _want_ me to find love. Does that sound peculiar? Well, it's true! It's one hundred percent true! Nothing ever works out the way I want it to! Nothing at all! _And where is that infernal trip-trapping coming from?_"

She whirled to confront the pirates or the Salamander or whoever it was who was playing tricks on her, but as soon as she did she realized she had made a mistake. The pirates were gone, so hastily that Mermaid had left his pegleg behind, and the Salamander was gone, except for a few glimmering opal scales scintillating in the dust, and she was alone in the Vicar's clearing, with the Vicar having absconded for his kingdom in the sky.

Alone except for the Wild Hart, fifteen hands high in the morning light, looking at her with his sad eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

And here's the last chapter! Although I might end up rewriting the last two paragraphs or so I confess that I am basically thrilled with how this turned out. It was fantastic to finish something again and I think it's given me the confidence boost I needed to start working on my next major project, which regrettably you will not be seeing on been a fantastic audience and I love each and every one of you truly and deeply and madly. I hope to see you again at some point.

Reviews are not at all like forgetting your umbrella, which is to say they're fantastic. On to the story!

* * *

The March-Stepper  
Chapter Seven

Once upon a time there was a Blue Salamander in a wickerwork basket, and though his low-slung legs scuttled him fitfully from one side to the other and his sharp claws scraped against the rushes and his thorny feet dug out footholds in the powdery sand and his heavy tail battened against the woven reeds that hemmed him in he found that he could not escape his prison.

When this had become apparent to him he curled up on the ground and rolled his eyes, golden with silver flecks, up at the roof of the basket- convex with the weight of a Turk's round bottom. "I'm lissstening," he hissed.

"Glad to hear it," said the Turk, voice muffled by wickerwork. "I am Rostum of Samarkand, and I have seen the marvels of the world."

"Go on," muttered the Salamander, considering his options and finding them scant and limited at best.

"I have lived in Constantinople, where I swept the floor of Hagia Sophia, font of holiness and insight; I have sold sweetmeats from a wooden cart as far west as Rome, where once Caesar reigned under the auspices of the golden laurel crown. I have harvested adderswort and frogsliver in the dark dripping depths of the Afric and stood in the Ka'ba where the Arab nomads come to render sacrifice to their idols, which are carved most cunningly from stone."

"How very interesssting."

"And," continued the Turk, "I have, over the course of my lonely pilgrimage, acquired mighty magic- magic sufficient to impose a human consciousness on the body of the immortal Salamander, and vice versa."

"I too," hissed the Salamander, "have mighty magic. I could make it ssso your bonesss would be asss living fire, and your eyesss would roassst like chessstnutsss in your ssskull."

"So the sages tell us," whispered the Turk. "I had hoped that you might be- persuaded."

The laugh of a Salamander was a terrible thing, all papery and cold and cruel. "Persssuaded to give up the life eternal? To what end?"

"Men," said the Turk, "have thumbs, that can grip and prise and twist."

"And they ussse them to lift ssswordsss and ssspearsss with which to ssslaughter one another in the thirsssty desssert. Sssalamandersss have no ussse for thumbsss."

"Men," said the Turk,"have words, that can be scrolled on parchment or carved in wood or stone that we may be remembered."

"And if one wasss to know that one wasss going to die then perhapsss that would be a comfort. Keep your wordsss, Rossstum of Sssamarkand; wordsss linger on a year or two, but I go on forever."

Rostum fell quiet. "Men," he said, after a time, "have hearts, that can love, though mine be broken." And the rustling from within the basket was still.

"Then work your magic, oh man of Sssamarkand," said the Salamander, "for the life eternal wearsss thin after a time."

And there was a flash like a second sun blossoming in the sky and a crash like a battallion of angels warring in the sky and a snatch of strange sad music like a chorus of exotic songbirds chirping in the sky, and then there was only the Turk-Who-Had-Been-A-Salamander's hands, twining ecstatically through the black tangles of his heavy beard as he laughed and laughed, and the Salamander-Who-Had-Been-A-Turk, testing out his unfamiliar low-slung legs, blinking his golden eyes, searching for the something that was missing from his chest…

Now he stood on those glimmering legs in the shadow of the Vicar's lonely hut, trying not to hustle or bustle in the dried-up leaves, and braved the wandering eyes of the Wild Hart.

The girl (for it is _her_ story, after all, even as it draws to a close; I just thought that perhaps you'd want to know what had befallen the Salamander in those far-off dusky days) stood transfixed in the gaze of the Hart's warm glowing red eyes and quite forgot what she had been about to say.

"Hello," said the Wild Hart, mercifully. His voice was like a piece of velvet abandoned for years in some fusty attic- a little dusty and a little crusty but still smooth to the touch.

"Hello," said the girl, who had after all been raised to be polite. The Wild Hart's powerful neck stretched luxuriantly up towards the sky.

"I see that the Vicar has left us," he said. "A pity."

"Is it?" asked the girl. "I don't think he would have been able to tell_you_ anything you didn't know already."

The Hart's laugh was gentle but unsympathetic. "You give an old beast more credit than he deserves. I know nothing but the rush of the breeze through the lantern woods and the taste of corn in the fall and the peculiar savor of salt… and, of course, the burden."

"You know Trolls," said the girl. "That's for certain."

The Wild Hart acknowledged this with a dip of his head. "I know Trolls," he said. "I know Salamanders, too, and pirates, to a degree, and dragons, and preacher-men. I know angels and devils and goats, djinns and drips, the fair folk and the tall folk alike."

The girl scowled accusingly. "Salamanders and pirates and dragons," she said, "you've been following me, haven't you?"

"I have," admitted the Hart, "but your companions have fled like mist from the morning, and I'll follow you no more, for that's my burden, you know. They have their world and you have yours, and they don't cross. They aren't meant to cross, you see."

"But I want them to cross," said the girl, stamping her foot petulantly. "It's _boring_ being regular. All you're supposed to think about is the harvest, and grain, and- and- and_chores._ It's not fair. What's the point of life if you aren't allowed to have adventures?"

"Hasn't it been an adventure, though?" asked the Hart.

"It's not the same!" cried the girl. "I wasn't a part of it, not really. Not if I have to go home at the end. Not like _this_. It was hardly worth it."

The Hart pawed the ground. "But you go on, don't you?" he asked, softly. "There's your difference. You get to go home and do your chores and think about the harvest. They can't have that, you know. Storybook creatures never can- the story goes on even if you're not in it. You get to go home before the ending. They never can."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that nobody will ever know whether or not the Vicar gets his Heaven. I mean that the pirates never do find another floating island, because they've used up all the stories they have and now all they have is stories. I mean that the Salamander-"

(Here the Salamander startled in the leaves to hear his name on the tongue of the Wild Hart, but try as he might he could not make out what the Hart had to say, something prevented him-)

"-and the Troll meets me in the end and turns to stone. That's what I mean. You never really were a part of their story, you know, and they were never really a part of yours. You'd know if you were. Being part of a story changes you, it blesses you and then it hurts you and when it's over you can never quite go back to the way things were before."

The girl was quiet for a moment. "And when all the Trolls in England are gone?" she asked.

"Then I am allowed to rest," said the Wild Hart. "That's my ending."

"But I don't want to go back to the way things were before."

"You haven't a choice," said the Hart, "you haven't suffered enough. 'And then she went home' isn't a proper ending. It's like a Troll story."

The girl scrunched up her face in a frown. "How is it like a Troll story?" she said.

"It's not finished," said the Hart. "You'd need a second Troll to tell you how it ended-"

"Oh, _damn_," cried the girl, and took off in a rooster-tail of dust and pebbles, the heels of her sensible shoes kicking up pine needles and clods of clinging black dirt, pattering pell-mell off towards home as fast as her limber young legs could carry her.

The Wild Hart bowed his head and nibbled tentatively at the crabgrass.

"And should she prevail," he said, after a while, "what then? More work, of course, but there again, when one has one's objective clearly in sight…" He chewed. "Well, it's a quandary."

"I would think," hissed the Salamander from the velveteen shadows, "that it would all be much the sssame to you."

The Hart didn't look around. "You would think so," he said, "those in your position often do. But after a time one grows weary, and one grows sick, and one wishes for- respite. I have been the Wild Hart a long long time."

"Ssso you would rather ssshe wasssn't fassst enough?"

The Hart laughed, not unkindly. "Let's just say I'm not quite ready for my ending yet."

"But-" said the Salamander, and shivered as a kind of creeping chill swarmed the clearing. The Wild Hart's head creaked slowly about to bear on him, and his antlers were bristling with knives, and his eyes were glowing like the very forges of Hell, and his breath spurted from his nostrils in plumes of stinking sulfur smoke.

"We are _not_ friends," said the Hart, and with a high squeak of panic the Blue Salamander scuttled off, as quickly as his low-slung legs could carry it, to find his heart.

Once upon a time there was a Troll who lived under a bridge in Dyfed, making his home in a patch of riverbed where the cold clear water gurgled over the smooth black stones. Now, most people wouldn't be very happy if their houses were always just slightly submerged, but Trolls actually rather enjoy the damp and would probably be horrified if you were to suggest they move into a good stone garret or thatched hut.

_This_ Troll, however, was not enjoying himself at all. To be fair, he had just recently lost the love of his life and so he was feeling quite understandably sad, but had he anyone to keep him company except sheep (or had the sheep been a little more self-aware) they might well have remarked that his sulking was beginning to verge on intolerable.

Of course the sheep were barely aware that the Troll was there. But if they had been they would have been alarmed to see that the Troll was doing what Trolls did when they were feeling very poorly indeed, which is to say he was turning very slowly to stone, from the mossy soles of his feet up.

From time to time he would sigh, in a voice which could only fairly be described as gravelly.

Once upon a time there was a girl who actually did have a name (a very lovely one, in fact) but had gotten into the habit of claiming she didn't due to her association with a_very_ hungry Troll- for, you see, there are Rules that Trolls live by and daren't break, and one of these rules is that Trolls aren't allowed to eat anything that doesn't have a name.

But she would tell him her name a dozen times over (she promised herself as she came half-running and half-skidding down the steep embankment of the riverside) if he would only take her back. She knew now that she had been going about things the wrong way. It was a mistake she meant to fix, and fix it she would.

That's what the girl was thinking just before her sensible walking boot caught on a stone mortared in the sluggish mud of the embankment and sent her tumbling head over heels down the slope, through the mud, and into the river with a mighty splash.

A second later she broke the surface, gasping, sodden, muddy, but determined. She slogged grimly through the water, huffing from the exertion of moving at any speed in waist-deep muck, wringing out her hair with both hands, bound for the bridge where her lover waited.

"Troll!" she called when she thought she might be near enough. "Troll, are you there?"

She paused to catch her breath and wait for a response, but none was forthcoming. Spitting to get the taste of river water out of her mouth, the girl lunged resolutely forward and was immediately bowled over again by a falling sheep.

Once again she burst out of the water, wiping grit from her eyelids with the backs of her hands, and howled "_It won't do you any good, stupid, he doesn't EAT them!_" up at the sky. The sheep, bobbing woolily up and down in the trickle, baaa-ed in what sounded like agreement.

"Girl?" the quavering voice called faintly from the murk and shadow under the bridge.

"Troll?" called the girl, desperately, and waded forward in an ungainly sort of waddling gait.

Under the bridge there were dim tides of washed-out light, and a great big kettle with CHRISTOPHER carved on it resting on a scorched flat stone, and a flock of kine shuffled close together on a dry spar of limestone. In the middle of it sat the Troll, snuffling under a wet blanket and clutching a sheep like a stuffed bear.

"Oh, it's you," he said, throatily. "Come to have it out with me, have you? Well, get it over with, I'm busy. Gotta lot of cryin' to catch up on an' I think the tea's almost done."

"There's something I need to tell you," said the girl.

"Wot's that?" roared the Troll, squeezing the sheep in one warty hand and bunching the other in the sopping blanket. "Well, out with it!"

The girl hesitated and plunged on. "One day," she said, desperately, "one day a hunter came to the castle!" The Troll squinted suspiciously.

"Wot castle?" he demanded.

"The one with no _walls_," said the girl, "what castle do you _think_?"

Something flickered in the Troll's big wet eyes. "Go on," he said, suspiciously.

"Well, um," said the girl, stalling, "he- he told the king- that he could get rid of the deer!"

"The deer? Wot deer?"

"Well, the castle didn't have walls, did it, so there were always deer and things wandering in and out of it, weren't there, eating paintings and going to the loo on the divan and that. Drove the king almost to distraction, it did. He was a nervous sort of king."

The Troll caught himself nodding despite himself and scowled ferociously. "And then wot happened?" he asked, begrudgingly.

"Well, the king promised the hunter he would give him half his kingdom if he could drive the deers out, and the hunter set up in a little stand of trees just outside the castle with his bow and his special arrows."

"Wot made the arrows special?" demanded the Troll.

"They were carved from splinters of the Cross," said the girl, "which he bought from a peddler in the Holy Land."

"Go on."

"Well, the hunter lay in cover for three days and three nights, and whenever a deer would set foot in the castle he would shoot it with his bow and it would just fall to the ground, dead in a heartbeat. The king and his sons ate venison sausages and venison pies and smoked venison and venison bacon."

"And then wot happened?"

"The hunter shot every deer in the forest except one, which he missed on the first night and then again on the second night and the third. It vexed him, because he didn't like to miss and he had never missed before with his special arrows. So on the third night he hid behind a sofa and when the deer came trip-trapping through the palace he jumped out with his knife and-"

"And what?" asked the Troll, almost dancing with excitement.

"-and nothing, because that deer was the Wild Hart."

The Troll shivered. Far away in the quiet forests of Dyfed the Hart started and turned his powerful head with its thousand mile stair off to the west.

"Don't say his name here," muttered the Troll, but the girl pressed on.

"'Well now,' said the hunter to the Hart, 'I see we're at odds.'"

"'Seems that way,' said the Hart.'"

"'Don't suppose I could persuade you to take your business elsewhere?' asked the hunter."

"'It would take some persuasion,' said the Hart."

"'That's what I thought,' said the hunter, and with that they came down to terms."

"The next morning the king got out of bed and had his breakfast of venison. By twilight he was forced to admit that the hunter had filled his end of the bargain, and he signed over half of his kingdom to him right there and then."

The Troll scowled. "That don't make any sense," he said. "What could a low-down hunter have to offer the likes of the Wild Hart himself?"

"How should I know?" demanded the girl. "Anyways it's _your_ turn."

The Troll considered this in silence for a moment. "That," he said, finally, "was a good story. Girl, I've got to tell you somethin'-"

"No, me first, it's important-"

"No, you don't understan', I need you t'-"

"Take me back," they said, at the same time, and after a minute they broke out into peals of laughter- hers high and faintly musical, his bearing more than a slight resemblance to the sort of sound a bullfrog might make if it was gargling in gravel.

"Ach," said the Troll, unlimbering his legs to stand, "I always knew that you was goin' to come back to me in the end."

"Oh my God," said the girl, horrified "your legs have turned to stone."

The Troll glanced down disinterestedly and saw that this was true.

"Well," he said, with an air of finality, "they'll keep." And with that she took his massive hand in hers.

And there, in the musty shadow of the bridge, she grew monstrous ugly. Her flesh grew knotty and blue-green and her arms grew long and skinny and down to her knees. Her hair grew oily in that place where there was no soap and her eyes grew big and black and wet from lack of light. Her nose grew blunt like an old hatchet, bulbous like a bit of potato, and her lips grew fleshy about her snaggle teeth.

But she was happy and he was happy and they told each other stories as the years wore on- stories about high-flying preachers, murderous fey, slumbering princes. In time their stories swept England, for Trolls tell the finest tales and the best epics, as every child knows, and although they were always hungry (as what Troll isn't?) they suffered enough shepherds to cross their bridge unmolested for their own grand tale to grow in spectacle and infamy. Perhaps the pirates heard it in their endless circuit through the lost woods and chuckled in amazement; perhaps the Salamander knew it from a pilgrim or a traveler in far-off Jerusalem, and smiled as Salamanders smile- quick and bright like the sun off a knife.

And they lived happily ever after until the Wild Hart came for them both.


End file.
